Posted by MikeT23 on 2/3/2013 8:42:00 AM (view original):You seem to be making the assumption that people would just take a team in whatever world is available because their options would be limited. I don't think that's true.

I'm assuming that the closer supply is to demand, the more economically efficient the system would be for WIS.

Posted by mchalesarmy on 2/3/2013 12:51:00 AM (view original):I like the idea of moving one of the teams from the 10+ opening worlds and sending them to one world and team 2 could go to another world rather than a complete merger of two worlds.

Perhaps all the players on the replaced team could go to the FA market. Or I guess more likely they would just be gone.

I don't know how happy I'd be to take a super team into a fairly competitive world, but maybe some worlds wouldn't mind.

It's probably a bit of a PITA for the programmers to merge worlds, I imagine adding a team from World A into World B and removing the team it would replace fairly often would be more labor intensive than they would want to take on.

I think it is essentially a non issue for the most part. Even tard worlds fill eventually. Some even change their name and go on to be even more tarded up. Ultimately most decent worlds fill relatively fast.

I agree that a new owner could be turned off by it, but IDK an easy fix for that.

That should be the real focus here. Not how long worlds take to fill, because it is a non issue for most good worlds, but rather what could WIS do to help steer newer owners into better leagues. I'd like to see an "Average openings" over the last 4 seasons & "Average rollover time" over that same period columns added to the World list, but at the end of the day that just makes the tarded worlds even harder to fill and WIS probably wants to stay away from any kind of stats that would cast aspersion on some worlds for fear of losing those owners. Not to mention most decent worlds screen new owners and are rightfully leery that a "new owner" is simply some alias. Too bad a person must spend 50 bucks or more in a tard world to have a chance at getting into a good world.

You keep making the assumption that only "tard worlds" with large amounts of openings, long rollovers and super teams let in new owners and that is not true. There are established well run balanced worlds that welcome new owners. It largely depends on the temperment of the world and if the people in it want newbies becuase they want to take advantage of them or if the owners in the world are smart enough to realize that you want to encourage new owners to stay long term. Good worlds that welcome new players have owners who encourage new owners to ask questions both in the world chat and the forums. They also have owners who will answer questions honestly and do not try and take advantage of new owners by offering a 81 rated average fielding SS who can't hit for a monster 77 OAV catcher and then tell the new owner they are getting the better of the deal because they are getting an 81 for a 77.

Posted by mchalesarmy on 2/3/2013 12:51:00 AM (view original):I like the idea of moving one of the teams from the 10+ opening worlds and sending them to one world and team 2 could go to another world rather than a complete merger of two worlds.

Perhaps all the players on the replaced team could go to the FA market. Or I guess more likely they would just be gone.

I don't know how happy I'd be to take a super team into a fairly competitive world, but maybe some worlds wouldn't mind.

It's probably a bit of a PITA for the programmers to merge worlds, I imagine adding a team from World A into World B and removing the team it would replace fairly often would be more labor intensive than they would want to take on.

I think it is essentially a non issue for the most part. Even tard worlds fill eventually. Some even change their name and go on to be even more tarded up. Ultimately most decent worlds fill relatively fast.

I agree that a new owner could be turned off by it, but IDK an easy fix for that.

That should be the real focus here. Not how long worlds take to fill, because it is a non issue for most good worlds, but rather what could WIS do to help steer newer owners into better leagues. I'd like to see an "Average openings" over the last 4 seasons & "Average rollover time" over that same period columns added to the World list, but at the end of the day that just makes the tarded worlds even harder to fill and WIS probably wants to stay away from any kind of stats that would cast aspersion on some worlds for fear of losing those owners. Not to mention most decent worlds screen new owners and are rightfully leery that a "new owner" is simply some alias. Too bad a person must spend 50 bucks or more in a tard world to have a chance at getting into a good world.

You keep making the assumption that only "tard worlds" with large amounts of openings, long rollovers and super teams let in new owners and that is not true. There are established well run balanced worlds that welcome new owners. It largely depends on the temperment of the world and if the people in it want newbies becuase they want to take advantage of them or if the owners in the world are smart enough to realize that you want to encourage new owners to stay long term. Good worlds that welcome new players have owners who encourage new owners to ask questions both in the world chat and the forums. They also have owners who will answer questions honestly and do not try and take advantage of new owners by offering a 81 rated average fielding SS who can't hit for a monster 77 OAV catcher and then tell the new owner they are getting the better of the deal because they are getting an 81 for a 77.

I am glad to hear that, but I have to believe it is only a small handful of worlds that you are describing.

It would be great to have those types of worlds listed somewhere in a pinned thread for new owners to find easily. That alone would probably be a big help for increasing newb retention.rates in general.

I think it is important for established worlds to be willing to take a newbies and there are some guide lines. If you have 5-6 openings only take 1 or 2. Don't allow the newbie to take a trashed team or one that got bounced for not making the wins minimum. Explain to them that the team from their hometown needs a veteran owner to have any hope of making the wins minimum and they would be better off taking the 80-82 team instead.

Capra has been very succesful taking on new owners that ended up being longterm owners in the league and it is mostly because the owners won't take advantage of new players and instead help new players understand the game.Established leagues taking new owners can help a league and is important to the long term success of HBD

Posted by crickett13 on 2/4/2013 9:29:00 AM (view original):I think it is important for established worlds to be willing to take a newbies and there are some guide lines. If you have 5-6 openings only take 1 or 2. Don't allow the newbie to take a trashed team or one that got bounced for not making the wins minimum. Explain to them that the team from their hometown needs a veteran owner to have any hope of making the wins minimum and they would be better off taking the 80-82 team instead.

Capra has been very succesful taking on new owners that ended up being longterm owners in the league and it is mostly because the owners won't take advantage of new players and instead help new players understand the game.Established leagues taking new owners can help a league and is important to the long term success of HBD

I agree with this. I'll add to it as well. I'm always happy to take on newbies in Satchel Paige, but its always with the stipulation that they get in touch with a mentor. I think that helps alot.

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/2/2013 5:29:00 PM (view original):There's also a financial aspect. FOX can have 100 good worlds and 80 crap worlds. Or 100 good worlds. Why on earth would they want to take 50k out of their pockets three-four times a year?

Every day it takes a world to fill is a day longer until Fox can collect money from everyone in that world again. They might make more money if fewer worlds filled faster. The numbers aren't as dramatic as 80 of 180 worlds would shut.

Exactly. The best economic model with respect to HBD would be the one that brings in the most amount of money in "x" amount of time. Fewer would that fill faster might generate more revenue that what they've got now.

It's clear that this problem isn't going away. Free teams, credits, discounted prices, etc., are just temporary solutions that doesn't address the root cause of the problem, which is that supply exceeds demand, and has for some time now.

never understood why they kept creating new worlds, other than people whining about wanting "their own team"

run a team for a few seasons, and they'll basically be all your "own" players anyway

WIS makes new worlds because it requires new players. New players = new HBD customers. Most established worlds don't allow newbies, so those newbies need a place to play. WIS doesn't care if the world goes to **** early because they've already plucked 8 new customers for a season. If half of those newbies end up a regular HBD player, then there's four new regular customers.

Veteran owners join new worlds because they see it as a good chance to get the "dominant" team in that world. They know that the quality of competition is going to be very low, and most of the new owners will drop out. They now have a leg up on the owners that come into the world after season 1. Even if you don't trade with a newbie, you are still at a distinct advantage playing with 8 players in a fresh world that are new to the game rather than 0.

edit: I will give my own personal experience on this. I was a member of the first season of Kenny Powers, this was my "chance" to get into an HBD world. A new world sounded tempting to me, and all the worlds I applied for rejected me because I had 0 seasons. During the first spring training, I made a bad trade. It happens. I traded a #1/#2 starter and a very good young reliever with low stam/high DUR for a 23 year old pitcher with great stam/control and terrible splits/pitches. I had no idea splits and pitches were so important, but I made the trade anyways thinking I was dumping a veteran SP for a stud young arm. The trade causes a ruckus on the world chat, including me being accused multiple times of being an alias and basically calling me a retard for making the deal. That said, the trade ended up not being vetoed because there were so many other new owners in the world. I ended up leaving after my 2nd season, after some particularly disparaging remarks were made about the trade a SEASON LATER in spring training. The owner that I gave the stud SP to ended up winning the World Series, and evidently, that ****** some people off. I ended up not playing HBD for a couple years after that because it was such a bad experience. I love the game, and thank the lords that the great guys in Spahn let me into their world when I inquired despite only two seasons of experience.

edit2: I think the point I am trying to make is that the community's lack of acceptance of newer owners is one of the biggest problems in HBD. some owners just simply need to accept the fact that we are going to need new HBD players to fill all these openings. The better you treat these new players, both in what you say but more importantly in how you act towards them (not offering obviously lopsided deals that may confuse a newer player), the more will come back and inherently lead to fewer openings.

All right there. Newbs get the experience, and don't get in the way of experienced owners until they get experience, and shouldn't get the backhand from experienced owners with less than good intentions.

The problem is, with new owners, that you don't know if they're aliases or n00bs.

It's hard to convince someone to NOT play with their new toy but that's exactly what n00bs should do until they get a feel for the game. When a n00b joins a world and makes a horrible trade, it reeks of an alias. Especially if the n00b cops an attitude.

I don't have a solution but there is a wealth of information that most HBD owners are willing to share if for no other reason than the people they know in the real world don't care. Ask them.

Hell, I have a 100+ seasons and had a trade vetoed when I was a caretake by people who "knew better",

97 openings right now with 2 more worlds rolling in the next 24 hours. 5 of those openings are from 5 different worlds, but things are edging closer to how it was before the 5 buck promotion (which is still around). So is this another cyclical downswing, or is this an indication of a chronic oversupply problem?

It's been coming for a while, it also seems that the number of abandoned teams is on the rise again. With the baseball season winding down and football starting up this is a notoriously tough time to generate new interest in HBD so let's see what CS comes up with the solve this issue.